Rolling Stone Sued For Text Messaging Spam

from the a-text-message-gathers-no-moss dept

Rolling Stone publisher, Wenner Media, has been hit with a class action lawsuit over spam text messages that were used to aggressively promote Rolling Stone, US Weekly and Men's Journal. Of course, it's not clear that this is actually illegal. The lawsuit is based on a law that forbids the automatic dialing of marketing phone calls to mobile phones, but it's not clear if that actually applies to SMS messages as well.

Filed Under: rolling stone, spam, text messages
Companies: wenner media

The 'Spam Filter Ate My Notice' Reasoning Convinces Court To Extend Deadline

from the but,-don't-think-you'll-be-so-lucky dept

I have to admit that I've been noticing a lot more false positives in my email spam filter lately. Fewer actual spam messages have been getting through, but a few too many legitimate emails have been getting caught. Apparently, I'm not the only one. A group of folks who were suing AIG, and lost on summary judgment, have successfully extended the deadline to appeal after claiming that they missed the initial notice (which indicated when they needed to appeal) because it got stuck in the spam filter. The court noted that this excuse has failed in the past on numerous instances, but because this was the only real evidence of a mistake, rather than a pattern of similar mistakes, it extended the deadline. However, it did "beat up" on the lawyers as well. So, generally speaking, it's probably not a very good excuse to use... but every once in a while it might just work.

Filed Under: spam, spam filter

Canadian Spammer Who Ignored US Judgment Discovers Canadian Courts Are Willing To Uphold US Rulings

from the spam-spam-spam-spam dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how Canadian spammer Adam Guerbuez had lost a lawsuit in the US brought by Facebook, alleging he spammed millions of accounts. He didn't just ignore the ruling; he gleefully mocked it on his own blog, playing up the huge amount ($873 million) the court awarded Facebook and referring to himself as the "$873 million man." Apparently, he didn't count on the news that a Canadian court would uphold the ruling and order him to pay. With some additional damages and the Canadian exchange rate, he apparently owes Facebook $1,068,928,721.46. I'm going to assume that this is more than he has -- though, I would imagine all of the photos on his blog highlighting himself living the good life probably won't help. In fact, now he's claiming that he's declared bankruptcy, so he's still not planning on paying. Again, all those photos on the site... might not look so good in bankruptcy court. That said, a billion dollar fine is a ridiculous amount for spam, no matter how annoying you believe spam might be.

Filed Under: adam guerbuez, canada, spam
Companies: facebook

Spamhaus Asks Court To Dump Even The $27,000 Award To Spammer

from the spam-spam-spam-spam dept

Back in June we wrote about how the years-long lawsuit between "email marketing" (i.e., "spam") company e360 and anti-spam group Spamhaus concluded with a judge reducing an $11 million award down to just $27,000 for e360. If you don't recall, e360 sued Spamhaus for naming it on its top spammers list -- despite an awful lot of evidence that e360 does, in fact, engage in spam. Spamhaus, which is based in the UK, ignored the proceedings, which is why it got hit with the $11 million award. While, e360 can't be happy about the lower award (one has to imagine its legal costs were much greater than that), $27,000 is still a lot of money for an operation like Spamhaus -- especially when the organization was just stating an opinion -- and one that it backed up with plenty of evidence.

So now, Michael Scott points us to the news that Spamhaus has filed a motion to reconsider even the $27,000 award, noting that it believes there are some errors in determining the $27,000 number. The filing notes that such motions are rarely successful, but lays out the reasons why it makes sense in this case. Specifically, the method for calculating the award was not one of the methods that e360 asked for, meaning Spamhaus had no chance to point out problems with the methodology. Spamhaus also makes it clear that if the court does not reconsider the $27,000, it will likely appeal the case back up to an appeals court. I can understand why Spamhaus is doing this, but it could backfire. I would imagine that asking the court to reconsider could potentially lead to a judge reconsidering in the other direction as well...

Filed Under: awards, defamation, spam
Companies: e360, spamhaus

Facebook Apparently Won't Let Users Talk About Facebook's Lawsuit With Power.com

from the how-do-you-like-your-free-speech dept

Yet another reminder of why relying on Facebook for conversations or discussions is highly problematic. We've noted in the past that Facebook doesn't allow any links to The Pirate Bay, even if the links are perfectly legal. But it appears to also be blocking mentions of its ongoing lawsuit with Power.com, which we were discussing just last week. Eric Goldman's blog also had a blog post about the ruling (well worth reading, by the way). Goldman regularly mentions his blog posts on Twitter and has his Twitter account set to automatically post his updates to his Facebook account as well. He noticed, oddly, that the tweet about the Power.com case somehow did not make it to his Facebook account, and tried to post it manually... and was blocked. Apparently, Facebook ridiculously overaggressive "spam filters" block any and all mentions of Power.com.

After a little more experimentation, I discovered that every instance of the character string "power.com" is blocked in Facebook. Therefore, every time I put "power.com" into my status reports or in comments to those status reports--even if it's the only content in the post/comment--I get the "blocked content" message. However, it's easily avoided; I can post "power . com" (notice the spaces before and after the period) just fine. Basically, Facebook is using a very dumb word filter.

While Facebook didn't respond to Goldman's initial claim that this content was flagged in error, he reached out to press contacts there, who tried to defend the blanket "dumb word filter ban," by saying that Power.com had done some spammy abusive things with user accounts. While that may be true, that's no reason to block any and all mentions of Power.com especially when the company is currently involved in an important lawsuit with Facebook. Even if there are legitimate reasons for the "dumb word filter," it makes Facebook look petty and as if it's trying to deny all discussion of the important legal issues involved in the lawsuit.

Goldman points out that one aspect of the Power.com lawsuit is that the company is claiming Facebook is violating antitrust law. Given that, it seems like it might not look good for Facebook to (clumsily) block all conversations about Power.com. That would appear to play directly into Power.com's claims of anti-competitive behavior.

Filed Under: discussions, social networks, spam
Companies: facebook, power.com

Spammer's $11 Million Win Against Anti-Spammer Spamhaus, Reduced To $27,000

from the that's-a-bit-different dept

Many years back, an "email marketing" company called e360 Insight got upset that the anti-spam advocacy group Spamhaus included e360 on its list of biggest spammers -- a list that many service providers used for spam filtering. So, it sued claiming defamation. What followed was a bit silly, as Spamhaus (based in the UK) initially responded, but then started ignoring the lawsuit, claiming that a US court meant nothing to the UK-based operation. Because of that, a court awarded a default judgment to e360, and simply took its word on how much "damage" being on the list had caused. The end result? An award of $11 million for simply putting e360 on a list of spammers.

Spamhaus initially ignored the whole thing, again claiming US courts had no jurisdiction over it. However, after e360 sought an injunction to get Spamhaus shut down for failure to pay, Spamhaus got involved. Thankfully, a judge refused to shut down Spamhaus, and while an appeal didn't buy many of Spamhaus' arguments, it did throw out the $11 million award, and send it back to the lower court to recalculate the damages.

So, now, four years after the initial $11 million ruling, the court has reduced the damages award to $27,002. Quite a difference, huh? I would have to guess that e360's legal bills cost a hell of a lot more than $27k. It turns out that there were a bunch of problems for e360, and once it had to actually prove how much damage being on the list had done, suddenly it wasn't so interested in giving a straight answer or, at times, answering at all. As Venkat Balasubramani notes:

Despite litigating the case vigorously up to this point, when it came to damages, e360 seemed to muster a lot less energy. According to the court, e360 was "slow to provide information requested by Spamhaus . . . [and] missed several [d]eadlines." I'll spare readers a detailed discussion on damages, but the court's take can be summed up as follows:

The unreliability of [e360's] approaches is unmistakably demonstrated by the profound differences in claimed damages profferred at various points during these proceedings. Finally, it strains credulity that a company that made only a fraction of the profits [e360] asks for over the course of its five-year lifespan would have garnered profits in the amounts [e360] set out in [its] testimony or documentary evidence. The profit and loss statement [e360 provided] sets out the company's overall profits at $332,000. . . . .

At the time of default judgment, the damages claimed were $11,715,000. During discovery, Exhibit 5 was proffered reflecting damages of $135,173,577. At trial, proffered Exhibit 5(a) showed damages of $122,271,346. During final argument, the claimed amount was $30,000,000.

Yeah, if you've made a total of $332,000 in profits over the course of five years, perhaps don't claim $11 million in damages just because some company (most likely accurately) put you on a list of spammers.

As for that big question of whether or not the company was involved in spamming. Well, others have certainly thought so. In the past, we've noted that the company had been sued for violating CAN SPAM, and in another lawsuit e360 filed (against Comcast for filtering its spam), the judge stated pretty clearly that e360 fit the description of a spammer. On top of that, in the blog post above, Venkat points out that, just in going through this lawsuit, e360 appears to have now put on public record an awful lot of evidence that its activities fall under the definition of what most people would consider spam:

Ironically, through litigating this dispute, e360 caused to be memorialized in a court order, facts about its email practices (and the email marketing industry in general) that I'm guessing it would prefer not be in the public eye. Two facts jumped out at me from the order. First, e360 sent out 6.6 billion (!) emails through the course of its five year existence. Second, there were some familiar faces among the list of its customers: SmartBargains and Optinbig.

Filed Under: awards, defamation, spam
Companies: e360, spamhaus

Facebook Trying To Get Canadian Spammer To Pay Up

from the spam-spam-spam-spam dept

Facebook has been somewhat aggressive in going after folks who try to use Facebook for spam, winning various high dollar judgments. Of course, you never expect the spammers who lose those lawsuits to ever actually pay up, but apparently in the case of one Canadian spammer, Facebook is upset enough to try to pursue things further. Michael Geist points us to the story of Adam Guerbuez and his gleeful disregard for the ruling against him (Google translation from the original French). Apparently, Facebook won an award for $873 million. In response, Guerbuez has put up a blog that doesn't just mock the situation, but gleefully plays up the huge amount of the award, while noting that he has no intention of paying, and doesn't believe the award applies to him, since he's in Canada rather than the US. Of course, the article notes that Facebook is now pursuing the case in Canada as well, despite the lack of an equivalent to CAN SPAM. This highlights one of the bigger issues with laws like CAN SPAM. As more and more spammers are not even in the US, the law isn't particularly effective. It seems that technological measures to deal with spam are always going to be more effective.

Filed Under: canada, spam
Companies: facebook

Not Illegal To Ask Your Fans To Spam A Judge... Though, Still Not Particularly Smart

from the spam-spam-spam-spam dept

Earlier this year, we noted that infomercial king Kevin Trudeau was sentenced to 30 days in jail for contempt of court after asking his "fans" to email the judge in a case in which Trudeau is battling the FTC. The contempt charge is a bit tricky, because it's difficult to see what's wrong with having people email a publicly available judge. And, indeed, it appears that the contempt charge has been overturned and Trudeau won't have to go to jail over it after all. That said, it still doesn't seem particularly wise to ask people to spam a judge who's in charge of determining your fate.

Filed Under: contempt, judge, kevin trudeau, spam
Companies: ftc

So Few Spam Lawsuits Because Judges Don't Understand Technology?

from the perhaps... dept

We've discussed various well known problems with the US's CAN SPAM law -- which, in some ways, is more about setting the rules for how to spam, rather than outlawing spam -- in the past, but Michael Scott points us to an analysis by John Levine, who argues that the real issue may be technologically unsavvy judges, which makes these kinds of cases very difficult to bring, successfully:

Judges tend to be reasonably smart, but few of them have a technical background. That means that before a judge can rule sensibly on a spam case, he or she needs to learn about the statutes and case law that apply, and also enough about e-mail technology to understand the evidence and evaluate the credibility of the lawyers' arguments on each side.... What this means is that the only cases that are likely to be filed are very easy ones, where the spammer didn't hide his identity or use affiliates, so the connection from the spam to the spammer is easy to show, or ones where the plaintiff has the legal skills to do a lot of the case work himself to keep the costs affordable, or unfortunate ones where the plaintiff is an anti-spam zealot with a poor case, leading to bad decisions....

While there may be some truth to this, I have to wonder if a bigger issue -- at least in the US -- is that CAN SPAM limits who can file lawsuits to the FTC and to ISPs. So individual recipients of spam basically have no recourse. If we expanded who could actually file the lawsuits to include those who receive a ton of spam, perhaps the lawsuits against spammers would increase.

Filed Under: lawsuits, spam

Are Automated Status Updates From Location Check-In Apps Degrading Your Social Network?

from the this-dept.-is-checking-out dept

Does this look familiar?

@YourBuddy
 I'm at the Apple Store Palo Alto in Palo Alto http://gowalla.com/spots/9591
 about 7 hours ago via Gowalla

It looks all too familiar to me. And these messages are increasing in frequency in inboxes and social sites. What's going on here is that a fairly new kind of app, the "location check-in" service, is starting to get more traction among early adopters, and the usage is resulting in rapidly increasing "10-20" updates. Last week, the SXSW conference was ground-zero for this battle, as two of the hottest players, Foursquare and Gowalla, battled it out a year after both launching at the same event. Gowalla, behind for most of the year, gained steam at SXSW, winning a SXSW Web Award. Gowalla launched an updated app in Austin...and that's where my trouble began.

It seems that many of my social contacts have decided to try Gowalla this past week, and as a result, my Status Updates from my Contacts in LinkedIn, and "What's Hapenning" in Twitter are getting stuffed with spammy updates of every time one of them shows up at some coffee shop. This is the worst of social...the anecdotal "I'm brushing my teeth now" update that we all made fun of before we discovered the real value of Twitter.

What has happened is that these Check-In apps are degrading the average value of the messages my friends send. As a "follower", I tend to only follow people who put tight filters on their tweets, usually offering some deliberate thought about politics, telecom, or technology. But once these people connected Check-In apps to Twitter, their deliberate, pensive, witty tweets are being overrun by location spam. I'm not your mom, and I don't care where you are!

To be fair, the Check-In apps, by themselves, are not bad, and can be quite cool. I like being able to sign into locations, leave virtual notes there, leave pictures on a virtual board, rate the place, get discounts. Many of the uses are fun, informative, and even whimsical. I like the goofy competition for "being the mayor" of the bubble tea shop. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Shane Snow over at Mashable describes the leading apps well, including a head-to-head feature chart. So while the apps can be engaging, it's just the optional connection of these apps to automatic outbound messages that is problematic and can generate too much chaff.

Not only can automated messages add up in quantity, but they can occasionally send the wrong signals, or be cause for embarassement. On one funny occasion, my wife visited someone at the hospital, and she turned on Foursquare. Because of the lingo of these apps, her Facebook page and friends were pushed the message "Liz just checked-in @ Kaiser Permanente Medical Center - Walnut Creek". Now, much as we liked the free flowers, we're not sure she was sending the right signals.

Like email and spam in the 90s, the good-quality, human written missives are being substituted by pointless, automated messages. It's far easier for a server to crank me out a message than for a person to type out 140 characters, so I predict this unfortunate trend to continue. An increasing number of status updates will be coming - not from your friends - but from machines they've allowed to send on their behalf. Too bad. I wanted to stay in touch with my friends, not their software.

Filed Under: check-ins, location, social networks, spam